Take your pick. Choose all the definitions, for with one exception - No. 4 - they're all here in Ali Smith's novel chock-full of art. Hold on: The cover may qualify for No. 4, "Artificial; not genuine." See for yourself.

As for the novel itself, what a treat. The first words are "The twelvemonth and a day being up, I was still at a loss." The narrator is addressing a "you" who is dead but reappears occasionally as a ghost. Shortly, however, because the voice is so clear, so funny, so sad, so intimate, we realize that there is another "you," and that it is us (or we). She is taking us with her through her grieving, and in the end we are not the same as when we began. Neither is she; neither will you be.

The novel begins in "our study," where desk and books now belong to her. On the lover's desk "what you'd been working on last was still neatly piled." It is this "unfinished stuff" that our narrator immerses herself in, the "stuff" being a series of lectures about art and literature (and are the lectures delivered by Smith herself at St. Anne's College, Oxford).

The individual lectures are titled "On time," "On form," "On edge" and "On offer and on reflection." So there we have an organization, a framework within which we can explore, along with the narrator, the poetry, the essays, the novels and short stories of an astounding array of artists - from ancient cave paintings to Gilgamesh through Charlie Chaplin to José Saramago and beyond. Doris Day shows up, as does Beyoncé, as do Michelangelo and Margaret Atwood, and let us never forget Harpo Marx, his pockets deep, his coat flapping.

What holds it all together? "Oliver Twist," the book she takes down in the beginning of the book and finishes by the end. Of particular interest to her is the Artful Dodger, whose pockets are deep, his coat flapping. Wow. (See No. 1 and 2.)

This novel is a feast for readers. It is an introduction to some artists and a fond look back at familiar names. The lectures argue for the worth, the worthiness of books. In the lecture "On time," she, in the person of her dead lover, writes, "Books themselves take time. ... Books need time to dawn on us. ... Real art will hold us at all our different ages like it held all the people before us and will hold all the people after us, in an elasticity and with a generosity that allow for all our comings and goings." Yay! I wrote in the margin of my copy.

The lecture in the chapter "On form" quotes Katherine Mansfield's note in her copy of "Aaron's Rod," by D.H. Lawrence. As an aside, allow me to point out that here you are reading the writing of someone (me) who is reading the writing of someone (our narrator) who is reading the writing of another writer (her dead lover), who is writing about a writer who's reading the writing of still another writer. Delicious, artful, one might even say.

Mansfield writes, "There are certain things in this book I do not like. But they are not important, or really part of it. ... All the time I read this book I felt it was feeding me." Another Yes! in my margin. At times, I became impatient with the academic lecturing - too much, I thought, get on with the story. But my objections were trivial and, as I read, like Mansfield with Lawrence, I felt Smith's book feeding me, although not full up, just enough to make me hungry for more, like Oliver.

But to the story, and yes, there is one. Will the narrator come through this period of mourning? How will we know? And by the way, what kind of a relationship did the two of them have? Can Smith handle all this personal stuff along with meditations on Greek, on everything under the literary sun? And how?

Our narrator does do things; that is, she does not simply sit and mourn. She sees a counselor. She has a job. She goes to Brighton. She asks her boss if she can come in late after she finishes reading "Oliver Twist." Absolutely not, she is told, and then, from her boss, "It's good, Oliver Twist ... Okay, but be in here as soon as you're done." (Bosses, take note.) She begins to learn Greek, which teaches her patience. She remembers making love: "It was a place that could only be reached when you were brave enough to come into yourself so wholly that you left yourself behind. It was a place I missed."

"Artful" is a love story full of everything - mind and body, past, present and future. The last lines of this wonderful book are spoken by the narrator: "(Who did I think I was talking to? You.)" Thank you, Ali Smith, from all of us.